Summary
Elon Musk called for the firing of Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long after she exposed racist tweets from Marko Elez, a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee who later resigned.
Long’s report revealed Elez had posted remarks promoting racism and eugenics.
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” Elez posted in July, according to the Journal’s review of archived posts.
Musk, who claims to support free speech, labeled Long “disgusting and cruel” and demanded that she should be fired.
Critics noted the hypocrisy of Musk advocating for a journalist’s removal over accurate reporting on a public official’s misconduct.
That’s not the same as net neutrality, more a free speech concern.
I used to be a free speech absolutist, partly on the grounds that people recognize lies, hatred, racism, sexism, and bs of every kind, so are generally not affected. We always ostracized the nut cases, so why wouldn’t we online as well? I had faith in my fellow citizens that letting extremists speak out would just shine the light on that extremism., expose the truth, correct the facts.
But we’re clearly in a world where none of that is true. We have people spewing forth all sorts of extremism, and people believe it. They’re gullible, naive, easily manipulated. Hatred, anger and lies have done serious harm to our society, economically, socially and politically.
The right to free speech only applies to government, and does not guarantee freedom from consequences. The root of the problem is online speech without consequences, but that’s a commercial entity, not government . If the service won’t rein in the worst speech, or provide consequences for speech that harms society then society doesn’t need the service. Shut ‘em down
I am a free speech absolutist myself: I like my enemies to out themselves as facist, and to be able to tell my like-minded comrades what should be done to those facists.
Elon is using free speech as a sword and shield, while not offering that freedom to others. He is first and foremost a coward, and secondly a hypocrite.